H1N1? Just fake it

Should you hit the panic button about swine flu? Possibly (even though sceptics might tell you that statistically speaking your chances of succumbing to the disease are significantly lower than meeting with a fatal accident on urban thoroughfares, such as Delhi’s notorious Ma Anandmayee Marg, which in 2008 alone saw 34 road deaths on its 5.6 km stretch).

One of the reasons for the H1N1 alarm might be that after a private clinic in Pune tragically misdiagnosed a 14-year-old patient’s infection, resulting in her death, the government has taken over all testing and treatment for suspected swine flu cases.

Despite the lamentable Pune case, this could be a cause for worry. For India’s sarkari health care by and large or should that be by and small? is arguably one of the worst in the world. Horror stories abound of infant patients being savaged by rats and other vermin that have free run in most government hospitals. Even showcase institutions, such as the nationally acclaimed AIIMS in New Delhi, have a deplorable reputation for hospital-borne diseases and other health hazards.

Then there is the question of medication. How effective is the medicine, monitored and stocked by government-run establishments, likely to be? The track record of sarkari supervision of the drugs and pharmaceutical industry is far from reassuring. Periodic surveys have discovered that in some urban and semi-urban areas in the country, more than 30 per cent of the drugs randomly subjected to analysis were found to be spurious. When in the normal course of things there is such a high incidence of fake drugs on sale, what is likely to happen at a time of imminent pandemic, when panic demand outstrips chronic short supply, providing the makers of spurious drugs an irresistible money-making opportunity by flooding the grey market? According to official figures, the spurious drug trade which reportedly accounts for some 25 per cent of the Rs 85,000-crore Indian pharma industry is extremely lucrative, yielding profit margins as high as 90 per cent. Returns on fake drugs would, inevitably, spike sharply upwards the moment scare-buying and hoarding begins.

The endemic culture of fakery which the government machinery seems unable or unwilling, or both, to eradicate is not restricted to drugs and pharmaceuticals. Almost everything that we consume in India is adulterated, or in some way tampered with, from milk to diesel, from foodgrains to cooking oil and baby food.

The latest fake product to thumb its nose at an ineffective sarkar is the Indian currency. According to a TOI guesstimate there is some Rs 1,69,000 crore of bogus bank notes circulating in the country. The officially nominated villain of the piece is Pakistan’s ISI which industriously prints out counterfeit Indian rupees to jeopardise our economy, funnelling the funny money into India mainly through Nepal. While this charge may be partly true, it shortchanges the role of our indigenous entrepreneurs, who are also busily operating their own do-it-yourself mints.

Is there a silver lining to be found in this dark cloud of all things counterfeit that hangs over India? Perhaps not. But if not a genuine silver lining, possibly there is a lining of bogus silver. And it is this: if all the things that we consume or interact with in our day-to-day lives have an element of fakery, is it not possible that our climate of the counterfeit has produced not an asli but an adulterated, or nakli, H1N1, unlikely to do us much harm? That’s our only hope. Bogus as it also undoubtedly is.

Author

A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, and Second Opinion, which appears on Wednesdays. He also writes the script for three cartoon strips. Two are in collaboration with Ajit Ninan, Like That Only which appears twice a week on Wednesday and Saturday and Power Point which appears on the Edit page of Times of India every Thursday. He also does a joint daily cartoon strip which appears online in collaboration with Partho Sengupta. His blog takes a contrarian view of topical and timeless issues, political, social, economic and speculative.

A former associate editor with the Times of India, Jug Suraiya writes two regular columns for the print edition, Jugular Vein, which appears every Friday, a. . .